All We Do Is Win, Win, Win

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LISTENING: "we come together holdin' hands and holla THUG LIFE!"
FEELING: happy
SEEING: my friend's gorgeous framed beige and red textile from Udaipur, India

Once a month, I write a story for Atmos, where I'm the editor-at-large. I love having space every month to write about what matters most to me. This month, I took my traditional annual climate wins story back to Atmos. If you've been following my work for a while, you've probably read my past editions. Last year's is here. 2022 is here. 2021 is here. That's probably enough from the archive, right?

I wanted to highlight here for you all some of the wins I'm most happy about, but please read the full list on Atmos here. Let's jump right in!

Gaza Student Encampments

On April 17, 2024, Columbia University students erected the world’s first student encampment to fight for the Palestinian people of Gaza, whom Israel has been killing with impunity since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. 

The action echoed across the globe with at least 174 encampments springing up in response. While all students called on their universities and academic institutions to divest from the military, weapons manufacturers, and companies doing business with or in Israel, some also demanded divestment from the polluters whose oil is fueling the tanks and fighter jets bombing innocent Palestinians.

A few student encampments even honored the life of environmental activist Manuel Esteban Páez Terán, known as Tortuguita, whom a Georgia State Patrol trooper killed last year while he was in an Atlanta protest camp to protect the forest where the city is building a new police training facility. “Glory to the martyrs,” one sign at the Columbia camp read, an homage to both Tortuguita and Gaza’s lost ones. “Tortuguita vive. La Lucha Sigue,” it went on in Spanish.

“Tortuguita lives. The fight continues.”

Climate Justice at the ICJ

International spaces have historically left me incredibly disappointed. Climate talks have led us nowhere for nearly three decades now, but maybe international courts — and courts more broadly — are an avenue to less talk, more action.

At the International Court of Justice (ICJ), island nations are currently arguing that the Court should recognize the legal obligation of high-emitting countries to protect the climate — and their responsibility for the harm that climate change is already causing. Pacific Island youth first began the process of launching the case in 2019. Five years later, they’re making history at the ICJ. The court’s ruling isn’t expected until next year, but the fact that the ICJ is hearing the case is a win on its own.

Klamath River Flows Freely

In October, the last dam on the Klamath River, which runs between California and Oregon, came down. The dam removal project made history as the world’s largest. Now, the salmon—long prevented from returning to their ancestral waters — have come home. In fact, the fish now have access to 420 miles of habitat that was previously unavailable to them. Many of these waters feature cold-water springs, giving salmon some reprieve as the planet’s rising temperatures make waters warmer, too.

The return of the fish will surely boost the ecosystem, as well as the cultures of local tribes that historically relied on salmon for sustenance.

Land Back Forever

This year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave back over 2,800 acres to the Shasta Indian Nation. In Minnesota, the federal government returned over 11,000 acres of national forest land to the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. The Onondaga Nation in New York saw some 1,000 acres placed back under its stewardship thanks to a legal settlement. Outside the U.S., in Colombia, a court killed a carbon credit scheme that violated the rights of the Pira Parana Indigenous peoples whose lands private companies were negotiating around.

Nick Tilsen, CEO and founder of Indigenous rights group NDN Collective, reminds us that land back is about more than transactions, though. 

“The land back movement is about dismantling the systems that made it possible for the stealing of our land in the first place and that continue to perpetuate our land being stolen today,” he said. “We actually really need to be thinking about land back as an abolitionist type of movement to dismantle some of these systems.”

Land back has always been about “liberation” and “justice,” Tilsen emphasized. Indeed, the final victory against the climate crisis will look like a return home for us all — away from consumerism and greed, away from extraction and exploitation. Here’s to more homecomings in 2025 and beyond. 🌀

This newsletter edition has been pulled from a story first published on Atmos on Dec. 18, 2024, titled "Your 2024 Climate Wins, Wrapped."

Rest in Power

While we can't say for certain that climate change led to these specific weather events (we need attribution studies for that), we do know that the Earth's rising temperatures are already creating more disasters like these.